Ghosts
by AWrenIThink
Summary: 'Matthew doesn't have nightmares. His dreams are blank and black and bare and silent and he doesn't stir.' post-S2 one-shot, Matthew-centric.


Matthew doesn't have nightmares. His dreams are blank and black and bare and silent and he doesn't stir. They are heavy, they press down on his chest and his head and the pressure glues his lips together and he is locked inside and he knows there's a key and a gate but while the darkness scares him it has become a constant, reliable and familiar. He never wakes up in the middle of the night (anymore), bathed in sweat and tears and screams, he rises in the morning, puts on the mourning suit and his head is pounding and his shoulders are trembling, but he is cold and clear-headed.

He is working again and the paper towers on his desk never shrink. Two near-by solicitors didn't return from France, and one came back without eyes. He can't sit for long, so he slowly walks from one window to the other and back again while reading. Clients enter and they sit and have tea and he tries very hard to keep his hands still but the clank when he puts the cup back on the saucer is still loud and sometimes tea will spill and he'll change the topic and dig his nails into his other hand. He listens and nods and then he has to stand up to say goodbye and the door closes and he grips the table, the chair, the shelves (but not the stick, never the stick).

There are ghosts, sometimes, around the corners and behind him. They don't stay around for long, they creep up and he can hear them whisper his name around the corner to join them, he can feel their touch lingering on his shoulder, their gaze from the windows, horses with red stumps where their hooves should be and figures in arms and uniforms and mud and her, white and golden and bright (and he can't even remember her laugh) and then they run off and his mouth is dry and his stomach is clenching and his lip is bleeding but they're gone, at least for a while, tiny little needles in his skin, and he doesn't chase after them to catch them, to see them, to meet them, but he can't help but think (and he closes his eyes) that if only they came face to face then maybe they'd leave him alone. Or maybe, finally, he would follow them home.

The first snow of the winter comes early, heavy white cushions on sills and walls. He doesn't realise the ground underneath is frozen until his feet have taken him far away from town into the fields, small golden lights of the estate shining through the woods behind him, and he's suddenly unsteady and it's not his back (not this time) and there's no way to go without the imminent fall, so he stands and waits, numbness spreading through his limbs, hat pulled down against the wind, trembling shoulders pulled up as the sun is setting, and he should have taken the stick, he can hear them again, feel them again, and he is cold. Lights break through the darkness and he is pulled into a car and he stares at Mary, red and silver and dark, who doesn't speak, and suddenly he's sobbing and still she isn't saying a word and he says he's sorry, so sorry, and he can't see anymore, he calls her names, ranks, friends, he calls her William, he calls her Lavinia and then he says Mary, again and again, and he can't go on.

He wakes in his bed, a cough in his chest and a fever on his lips. He doesn't move for two days, he is shaking and his legs won't function (and this is the worst), and he watches the snow melt outside his windows. He is leaning heavily on his stick for two weeks, leaving his mother's letters from London unopened after one initial reply, twice Moseley finds him at the bottom of the stairs barely conscious. When the maid asks him if he found the note Lady Mary left in his room that night he has to sit down (because it did happen) and then he looks on the nightstand, on the desk, and finally his eyes travel over the chest of drawers and he realises he hadn't slept in the icy wet suit, of course, and then, at the very back, next to the vase, there it is after being hidden beneath his nightwear all this time, small and brown and soft, such good luck, and just a couple of dark letters on the note that make him breathe again: Don't forget. (And this is the best.)


End file.
